Any women here working on IT / Electronics / Computer Science?

[MumOnBus]

Just curious whether you'd find something inspirational to say about your career choice?

I find it appalling that in 2009 only "16% of all students on undergraduate computer science degrees in the UK" were girls [1] -- but I doubt this figure has improved in the intervening years.

[1] www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/10/fewer-girls-taking-computer-science (I know this link is a few weeks old, but being the International Women's Day made me dig it up)

Any comments?

I'm in yr 2 of 4, Open University BSc Computing and Mathematical Sciences. Any idea what career options I could have? I would like time to spend with DC too..

Anyone work in this area?

I'm a physicist who works as a Product Manager which means I put the ideas into the software engineering teams, and shape the product we get out. This results in very high tech programmes that are used in cancer treatment.

Its a fantastic job, and incredibly satisfying to produce something that saves lives all over the world.

In the development teams, we don't have so many female coders, but the vast majority of the quality/testing teams, including management, are female. In my group, several of these engineers are homebased

DH works in computing and, despite being quite a family friendly company, most of the women work in admin, rather than technical roles. He's only worked with a tiny handful of female programmers since he graduated, over 15 years ago.

He and most of his colleagues are pretty geeky, many borderline aspie, though and I don't know whether girls simply aren't drawn towards that sort of career out of lack of interest or lack of belief that they can do it.

Maybe it's our responsibility as mums to take an interest in these things and bring them alive for our daughters? I am not interested in computer science so don't really push it on my girls - altho I love biology, botany and human sciences, the arts, construction, architecture and so on. My girls are very creative and musical. My 9 year old is great at maths and problems solving and loves construction - I think she would excel in computers/engineering.

I have a friend in Denmark who is doing mechanical engineering and she is really inspirational. Need to hang out with her a bit more!

I work in IT. I don't have a degree. I do have a video on Big Ambition Scotland (I think it's them) aimed at teenagers to show the diversity of IT jobs

I'm a PhD chemist who writes code for a living. My manager is also a woman but we are definitely in the minority. Being ancient, I had barely any formal training in programming.

My DDs school ( a girls grammar) is just introducing Computer Science GCSE and I'd definitely encourage DD to take that rather than Microsoft training ICT. However, my perspective is that while our company needs a few computer scientists, it mostly needs actual scientists who can write code. Its a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Its certaintly a great job for a mother - both my manager and myself now work PT, me from home, her partly so.

I have a MSc in Computing and Information Systems.

I work in a university in the technical side of delivering distance and online learning programmes. I keep our virtual learning environments up and running, spend a fair amount of time managing the data processes and manage all the 3rd party plug ins that allow us do things like lecture capture and virtual classrooms. I also spend a lot of my time training staff.

Because it's in a university and because it's at the cusp of teaching and technology, it is, in IT terms, fairly female heavy i.e. approaching 50:50

I'm a programmer (well.. these days I'm more at the Head of Development level - but I self-identify as a programmer) - like others, I've very rarely worked with other female coders or techies.

I think that the whole geek male population gets a bit of a bad rep and shouldn't put women off if they're interested. I've found that out of all the sections of business I've had to work with, the techies are the most likely to judge you on merit. Romantic advances are pretty common - as you might expect when you're a lone female in a room of men who perhaps don't get to interact with many women - let alone have conversations about shared interests - but they're rarely agressive or intimidating.

I know that that's a broad, sweeping brush, but I know more than one woman hounded out of technical support because the people she had to go and visit made awful comments, even though they were good at their job, and their colleagues would have loved to keep them.

I work in IT (Oracle database stuff), and have done for 20 years. My interest first started when my dad got a BBC Micro! On my computer science degree course, I was definitely in the minority as a woman, but my first IT jobs were in the public sector where the ratio was more even. In the private sector it seems to be mainly men - mostly though, I've got on fine, except for in one place where it was just too high powered for me. Maybe that's what puts some women off, as many private IT companies aren't that flexible - a friend of mine worked in private companies until she had her dc, after which she found the public sector to be far more family friendly. I turned down a job for a large corporate as it would have meant I didn't see dd much. My current job isn't cutting edge - nowhere near - but I can work it around dd. I leave the career bit to dh now!

Yep. I am a humanities graduate though so I'm not sure it could be classed as a 'career choice' as such. I just fell into it. I started off coding cobol and rpg many years ago. Now my main responsibility is e-commerce.

The men I work with can be a bit geeky but TBH they are also some of the most approachable, friendly, and helpful people I know. It's not a blokish dept at all.

I have a degree in Mech. Eng and a Masters in IT. I am far from geeky - quite the opposite - and I have to say so are the (female) mates I've met through the industry - we are in fact all incredibly girly, we just happen to work in a male dominated industry.
I have found however, that the women I have met in the industry tend to go down the business route (when I say that I mean becoming business/requirements analysts in an IT industry, or project managers) Only one has stayed techy (dba) and I would only now describe myself as semi-techy (I test software - once upon a time I was a developer, and also a dev manager for a bit (which I hated - I'm a worker bee, not queen bee) but I wasnt good enough at it in my opinion and ended up in testing - still lucrative if you understand the software lifecycle and get around a database). I ditched engineering after my degree as I found myself designing high pressure steam pipes in my year out and it bored me stupid - put me right off LOL)

I have never, ever had an issue with being a female in a male dominated industry. I have worked for very very large international companies, (10k+ employees worldwide) and currently work for a very very small one (20 employees) and all have employed me on ability I'd like to think, not novelty factor or any other random reason.

I'm all for encouraging both sexes into technical roles. It never once occurred to me during my teens that I 'couldnt' go into engineering for any reason. It just never occurred to me that I could either. Because it was never suggested. I only took it to be a bit 'different'. It wasnt until I was actually doing the course that I realised I was better at it ('it' covering a wide range of subjects) than the other folk, regardless of gender. I enjoyed a lot of it too (mostly the beer, but I was freakishly good at mechanics of solids - what the hell is that?!!)
Possibly if someone had suggested it to me I'd have thought about it earlier (during A-levels) whereas for me it was just a random - ok right I've changed my mind about that textiles degree - what now? moment.

I think that it should have been made more appealling in sixth form. To everyone. I was clearly good at maths and science, (also art) but no-one ever suggested engineering to me - just architecture (gah - no!!). Why on earth not? I do think though, and I am being very general, that female brains are just not wired like mens. I do. sorry. And this means that engineering/IT type subjects are simply just not appealling (again, generalising big time). Its nothing to do with whether they are 'as good at it' or not - its some sort of basic make-up.
That doesnt mean I dont think we need to advertise the opportunities more. We do. Because there are always exceptions. Possibly a heap of them, and they arent being given the information they should be.

I have a physics degree and I would love to return to programming when my children are older. Do you think there is any chance of a woman returning to computer programming after a ten year age gap. I am doing local courses to get myself up to speed, but I suspect that my age is against me.

I did a business degree and ended up in IT. I run a team at a University who look after all the back-end central systems and servers i.e. e-mail, student a-learning system; desktops, printing, payroll/personnel systems, finance systems, anti-virus, virtual desktops/servers, storage, archiving etc etc. Anything running on Windows/SQL.

It is challenging because it is large scale and we need to automate everything as much as possible otherwise we lose track of things. In addition "quick fixes" are the bane of our lives because they always break when we upgrade . But I love it. We are always at the forefront and pushing the boundaries of technology on a meagre budget. Hardest thing is dealing with other staff in the department. Computing bods aren't known for their empathetic skills - something I have definitely improved on myself!

I have a team of 4 men and the department is probably 2:1 men:women (about 120 staff). Quite a few in admin but it is probably about 50/50 in my position.

RT, I'm 51, I'm sure you're way younger than that!

I think I was quite lucky because I was already working from home before I had DD, and was able after maternity leave to first continue FT with a nanny and then when DD went to school PT, so I didn't have a career break. But I can't see any particular reason why you shouldn't be able to return after a gap if you've re-skilled.

the techies are the most likely to judge you on merit.
ITA. I don't think any of my colleagues give a hoot about gender. Hardly any of them have physically met me - it really doesn't matter. Actually I don't even know the gender of some of my colleagues with non-English names 'Dr something something' - I have to be a bit careful to use neutral terms in emails till I've got it sussed. I probably assume developers are male while QC and support are more likely to be female.

">the techies are the most likely to judge you on merit."

Absolutely. Personally qualifications don't mean a lot in my line of work. Problem-solving is what it is all about. Anyone can learn the technicalities but applying them and diagnosing issues seems to be an attribute not everyone has.

I'm not qualified in the discipline but have gradually been heading in that direction as my career has developed. I did maths and physics A level, alongside others, and sometimes I wish I'd taken a more direct route. But actually I value my wider experience as I bring more to the table.

What area of development are in? I think the challenge for me is getting my confidence back after ten years. I want to go back to database programming. Do you think I am better concentrating on .net or PHP or java. The world has really changed since I last did programming. I suspect an employer would look at me strangely if I told them that I had experience with Delphi, VB6 and SQL server 6.

.Net and Java definitely. SQL Server is still pretty relevant especially for larger systems such as Finance systems. We have loads and loads and loads of SQL servers. Virtually every central application we look after has SQL at the back-end. (That is partly by design as that is where the University's database technical expertise lies but it is offered with most applications).

I've read the article now . I think this is just an extension of society's fear of anything perceived as "difficult". It is also very uncool for girls to be seen to be good at, let alone enjoy, maths and the hard sciences. Expectations of all young people are far too low. It took me 10 years to realise that my maths skills could be put to really good use, and that an aptitude for maths was probably the reason why I enjoyed coding and problem solving (sound obvious now lol).

Just read the article myself and the link at the bottom
Our Role Model

though actually that's pretty much my hair

As well as (from now) offering Comp Sci, everyone at DDs school does triple sci, and they have to do a tech - 20 places Food, 40 Design, 60 Electronics. DD is def going to do electronics.

my background is engineering (on the programming side of things) I think that although I'm deskilled in that area nowadays you could still say that I'm rather geeky . There were only 2 other women (at different times) that I worked with in my field, both similar in personality to me.
Tis my mission in the school I work in to encourage girls in maths and science. Lots of confidence boosting. My theory is that if they havent switched off in Year 5 (when a lot seem to lose confidence) then they have a good chance of remaining interested.

lurker

I don't, but my younger sister back in the States, works for Apple and has advanced quite quickly. She has been aware of murmurings from some male colleagues that the reason for her success, is that she is female, and Apple want to tick boxes. However, given that she once received a glowing commendation from the late Steve Jobs himself (not something that happened to just anyone) they can shove their thoughts where the sun doesn't shine.

Anyway, as for anything positive about career choice, I've sent her an e-mail and asked if she has anything to say.

I was always good at science and maths, but went to (in my opinion) S**t school, where all they worried about was getting the bottom people up to 5 GCSE passes and didn't bother with anyone else. I did Maths, Further maths, Chemistry, music and french A-levels, and was going to do Chemistry at Uni, but DS and grades combo meant that I went for OU. I was then going to do Maths, but through working at Tech Guys after college (where I met DH), I thought I'd try computing. So really.. kinda fell into it.
Now I'm really enjoying it, but I just don't know where to go when I graduate, july 2014. Cos I'm not at proper uni, there isn't so much employment help, and with DC, I have no clue.

Do I really need to get some work experience? Or where should I start? I'm 20 atm, and will be 23 by graduation with 2-3(hopefully) DCs. I really would like a decent (ish) career, (hopefully so that DH could be a SAHD!).

It's great to hear everyone's stories.